Making Faces: A First Book of Emotions
A teacher’s look at why this book belongs in the Lap Listeners stage.
Why it fits Lap Listeners (for babies in their first year, when books are about your voice, not the plot)
Five big baby faces, five big feelings, and a mirror at the end. It invites imitation, the engine of early emotional learning. The find-the-face game inside grows with the child.
What makes it special
It's a game engine in board book form: find the face, name the feeling, make it yourself in the mirror. The clean photographic design isolates each emotion with billboard clarity. Emotional literacy is the skill the coming decades will demand most, and this starts it pre-verbally.
About Abrams Appleseed
Abrams Appleseed is the very-young-readers imprint of art publisher Abrams, known for design-forward board books — like the Making Faces series — that treat babies as capable of good taste.
Also by this author: Making Faces at the Zoo · Hello, Animals!
More from “Faces Like Mine, Faces Like Yours”
This book is part of The Best Books for Babies: 30 Teacher Picks (Lap Listeners) in our guide The Best Children’s Books by Age — 120 books chosen by the Montessori-certified teachers at Creative Minds Montessori in Frisco, TX. Come see how we build readers →
Nobody paid for this review — not the author, not the publisher — and the store link above earns us nothing. Our only interest is the reader this book fits.